Vickerdoodle

thoughts, opinions, and random arts & crafts

2017 has been a complete whirlwind. I’ve had some major ups, and some pretty big downs as well. We got a new MacBook and I’ve started learning to code, I improved my makeup game (I think? … I hope!), I went to my first tech conference and participated in my first hackathon! Most of all, I learned that I had room in my heart for a kitty. (No, but seriously… I’d always been 100% a dog person up until now.) All in all, some pretty cool things have happened.

Last week, I attended an event at MailChimp called MailChimp Gives (Feed)back! The company offered career counseling and mock interviews along with open-to-the-public panels on career searches, interviewing, whiteboard/technical questions, and even group exercises. I was lucky enough to get both a half hour career counseling session and a mock interview. It was really informative and I learned a lot from my experience there. The entire event was so well put together; there was delicious food (always a plus!), the panels were very well done, and I got a lot of great feedback and tips on breaking into tech and the road to becoming a junior front-end developer. (In case you weren’t aware, that’s my goal for the near future!) Would 100% do again in the future. It’s so amazing that companies like MailChimp offer services like this to the community; everything was free, all I had to do was sign up and tell them a little about myself and my goals.

Here are some things I got out of my time there: both specific to junior front-end development careers and also broad tech-related careers. Hope some of this helps you guys as much as it helped me!

I attended my first Hackathon this past weekend, organized and hosted by the amazing Women Who Code. It will probably be remembered as one of the best experiences I’ve had. Ever. I learned so much, I met so many amazing people, and I gained a great deal of confidence, and I made some wonderful, talented, incredibly inspiring friends. I am definitely going to attend more hackathons in the future, and I recommend that you guys do too! (For those of you who don’t know what a hackathon is, I’ll go ahead and take the description off the Women Who Code Hackathon’s website: A Hackathon is an event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects.)

If you know me at all, you know that I have a dog. His name is Hermes and he’s turning 2 years old today! We baked him little pupcakes (cupcakes that dogs can eat) and sang Happy Birthday to him. (This is Serious Business, okay? I don’t even do this much for my own birthday, to be quite honest.) I think I can kind of understand now why parents throw lavish parties for their 1 year old babies when the baby probably wouldn’t remember the party anyways. It’s just Important.

As some of you already know, I’ve been trying to change up some of my habits and create better, healthier habits. It can be difficult though, since once you get used to doing something one way, it’s incredibly hard to change that. I can’t comment on my “success” thus far, since I’ve been taking incredibly small baby steps, but I do feel as though I am moving in the right direction. So here are some cool things that I use to help me with my habit forming (or removing!)